


Stranger to the light

by DannyTadashi



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-12-13 05:55:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11753448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyTadashi/pseuds/DannyTadashi
Summary: (Fallout 4 short)A fall from the Prydwen, your armour destroyed. Maxson realizes you're not alone.





	Stranger to the light

The sound was defining that night.  
As I wake, I come to be face down in total darkness. A comfortable void to which escape seems near, and its bliss a blessing. Though I wasn’t fortunate enough to die. Slowly, realization sets in, and I cringe at the recognition of agony and the old familiar pain. An Impossible weight pins me down, as the muddy water fills the few inches between me and the glass. Rain pounds the back of my destroyed armor but I cannot hear anything but a deep ring. All I feel is the throb masked as a sound, though defining enough. The rain water leaks into every crevice, much like the blood through my teeth.  
The fall from the Prydwen was a blur. My breath ripples the mud water in my mask. I blink away the sediment from my eyes to make sense of the blur, and focus on the reflection of the sky through the glass. The horizon is slightly lighter than the ground, casting silhouettes of overhead crows. They seem to hardly move in the sky, and in this haze I realize I am barely conscious. My contaminated eyes blink rapidly as I search the reflection for the impending death, disguised as a goddamn blimp.

Another earthshaking boom rattles. Not thunder this time, as you would feel in your chest, yet all I feel is the ground shake beneath me.  
The rain seems to double for a second as the wave of impact flushes over, and the insignia prominent power armor of General Maxson slowly stands from bended knee.  
His stature stands tall and confident, pacing towards me with heavy thuds of his steps advancing. Yet and all I hear is the ringing. I instead imagine low deep guitar strings, serenading my final minutes. Or someone’s. I watch the final pulses of light inside my armor fade from weak to darkness.  
Like a beetle unfolding its wings, my armor opens and exposes my damaged back like a moth ripping away from its coma. The rain, cold and bitter.  
The footsteps stop. A strong mechanical hand grips the back of my steel shell and rips it away. Cold unforgiving hydraulic clutches turn over my soon to be carcass. Shallow breaths drag in and out rapidly, trying to cough, trying to expel blood from interfering with breaths. Though what interfered more was now his iron grip on my throat. My grip, tightened up on the pistol in my belt.  
Like daggers, his eyes pierced into mine. All I could do was witness the damage inflicted to that mind. The scar, across his right eye spoke symbolically of a life damaged by the years of pain and pressure welled up in his soul. Everything, all the pain and dragging decades led up to this, very moment. To finally have his greatest threat, dying in his clutches.  
My pistol slipped away from my hand, my semi-consciousness faded in and out.

His eyes refocused.  
Not on me. Not on any distant thought nor bolt of lightning that would have lit this darkness. But rather of an outline of a figure, slightly greyer than the backdrop that was the cold sky.  
The man stood stalwart against the diagonal rain pounding his long brown jacket and lowered brim. Mysterious as this familiar darkness, yet a stranger to the light. I have seen this man before. Never knowing his origin. Never hearing his voice, nor a whisper to state intention or past or even a name. Though his actions spoke loudly. A heavy revolver was held out straight. Incapable of wavering. Itself, more reliable than the old man’s very hands, aimed steadily at Maxson’s insane glare and unabashed scar. Its steady aim does not miss.  
The weapon discharged.  
And it was the only thing I remember hearing. The sudden crack that echoed in the darkness of the wasteland. The final release of my cocoon and new life to follow. That particular reverberation and its harsh description of the end. A sudden end. The sound was defining that night.


End file.
